A recent car crash in Randolph is raising new concerns about thousands of pieces of safety equipment on Massachusetts roadways after the one-car crash left the vehicle speared onto the guardrail and through the driver-side door.

"When you see a guard rail impale a vehicle, it's not working properly?" 5 Investigates' Mike Beaudet asked whistleblower Joshua Harman, who won a fraud lawsuit over the safety equipment.

"That's a failure," Harman replied.

Harman reviewed video of the crash for 5 Investigates, and noted that the guard rail end terminal -- the rectangular plate at the beginning of the guard rail -- was hit and snapped off, turning the guard rail behind it into a spear.

Those guard rail end terminals are supposed to absorb the impact of a crash, pushing the guardrail behind it like a ribbon.

But that didn't happen in Randolph.

"How lucky is that driver?" Beaudet asked Harman.

"It's a miracle he survived," he replied.

State Police initially blamed what happened on the driver's "excessive speed" saying the guardrail functioned properly.

Nonsense, said Harman.

"Baffled," said Harman. "They're not qualified to make that statement."

After 5 Investigates pressed State Police for an explanation, they changed their assessment this week, saying it's "beyond the scope of our expertise" as a law enforcement agency to say whether the end terminal worked, and that State Police now "offer no opinion" on how the guardrail functioned.

The guardrail end terminal in question in the Randolph crash was a modified version of the ET Plus, manufactured by Trinity Industries. It's design was modified in 2005.

Harman won a whistleblower lawsuit in 2014 when a jury agreed that Trinity defrauded the federal government by not reporting the changes. Trinity is appealing.

"People's lives and limbs are at jeopardy. It could be your family or mine," Harman said.

The federal government still allows the ET Plus to be sold, saying it passes crash tests.

Trinity tells 5 Investigates that the ET Plus "is the most crash tested end terminal system on the road today."

But crashes across the country have ended with gruesome results.

Dianna Allen of Webster says she hit an ET Plus in 2011 while driving on I-395 in Oxford.

"I knew it was bad," she told 5 Investigates. "there was blood everywhere."

In her crash, the end terminal was found in the treeline by the highway, and the guardrail itself speared through her Cadillac, cutting off the lower part of her right leg and injuring her upper thigh before exiting out the trunk.

"Did you think, I'm not gonna make it?'" Beaudet asked her.

"Yeah, I did," she said. "I thought long and hard about my kids. My daughter and my son."

Allen's is one of numerous pending lawsuits against Trinity Industries over the modified ET Plus end terminal.

Trinity declined to comment on her case specifically but spokesperson Jeff Eller said in a statement: "Before attributing blame to any product, it is important to examine the circumstances of the crash at issue, including the speed, impact point and other conditions at the time of the accident. Until those details are known, it would not be proper to comment on this specific case."

Massachusetts has more than 3,000 of the modified ET Pluses on the roads, according to MassDOT.

MassDOT stopped installing them in 2014 due to "ongoing concerns with its crashworthiness" and is slowly replacing them through "ongoing maintenance" but says it's not removing them all because they "meet federal safety standards".

A MassDOT spokesperson declined 5 Investigates' requests for an interview and also did not address questions about the device's safety except to say the end terminals are approved for use by the federal government.

Not true, according to Harman.

"These things are killer heads," Harman said. "If they're not removed off the highway, they will kill more."

Allen says Massachusetts just doesn't want to pay to replace them.

"What's the cost of a life? What's the cost of a leg? Because my life is not the same and it never will be," she said. "They need to come off the road."